A Conversation With ... James & Cassie Olson

James Olson: We started the company officially in January. There are a total of five employees. We are a wholesale gourmet coffee-roasting company. We specialize in roasting very high-end gourmet coffees, custom labeling coffees for businesses and coffee shops, and we do a lot of fund-raisers for the nonprofit sector. The other thing we do is turnkey coffee shops.

Tell me about the turnkey aspect of your business.

JO: We will help anybody who wants to put in a coffee shop. We have a partnership or dealership with Best Refrigeration so that we can put in the complete coffee shops. We’re area distributors for Monin syrups, too. I don’t want to list any names, because we don’t have any contracts signed, but we’re working specifically to put them into grocery stores. We’re talking to four or five people right now who want to put in coffee shops but don’t know how to do it. We feel like our part is to come alongside them and help them, and once we help them, we become their wholesale provider. We provide cups, napkins, cup sleeves, frappe mixes, cocoa, tea, coffee – everything that’s needed for a coffee shop. And we have had a very serious inquiry from somebody from out of town wanting to come in and do a coffee shop on Commercial Street.

Who’s buying your coffee right now?

JO: We have coffee in Silver Dollar City, (and) in several shops in Branson. We’re providing for several churches every month. We get coffee from 10 countries, but our primary (source) is Oaxaca (Mexico). We order 1,500 pounds (of coffee) at a time.

Your beginnings in coffee were in the nonprofit sector. How did that evolve into a for-profit venture?

JO: We started a nonprofit, Lamp International, in 2002, and that became our full-time job. In 2003, we decided to import coffee and have it roasted and market it to help raise money for our nonprofit, as additional funding. We’re doing what we call community transformation projects in Oaxaca, Mexico.

We felt like we wanted to use a product from that region to help fund those projects – using something the indigenous people produce to fund … medical clinics, fish farming, food distribution. We had other local roasting companies roasting and packaging, and we decided to go for it and make this a full-blown roasting company business. We’re doing this as any other small business.

How do the two of you make decisions about the company?

Cassie Olson: We pray.

JO: We definitely have a partnership in this. It’s not like I’m running the whole thing, and she’s taking care of the kids. We try to have time together every morning when we’re talking about the direction we’re headed, what the focus is, and what’s most important today. We do pray, and we talk about it and go through the major decisions.

Cassie, as the kids get older, how do you see your role changing with the company?

CO: I’m a people person, so it will probably be working in sales. Our ministry, I think, will also be more where I help out.

JO: Where she’s at is much more on an executive level, directional decision-making and helping with marketing and the brainstorming element. But as the kids get older, she’ll be able to be in the shop and the office much more.

So you continue to support Lamp International?

JO: The coffee company is helping to fund the projects. We are giving regularly out of the profits of the company.

CO: We travel to Mexico. We just went as a family in June, and we keep that as our focus, not just the coffee aspect.

Tell us about your family and spare-time interests.

CO: We’ve been married for 12 years, and have two children. Saralyn is 7, and Andy is 4.

JO: We’re big Silver Dollar City fans, and we get the family passes. And White Water and Celebration City.

CO: Church is kind of our other outlet, because we go on Fridays and Sundays to Faith Life Church in Branson.

What do you want this company to become?

JO: Our desire is to see this coffee company grow, and I can definitely see it being something that our children take. They may feel that they need to go a different way, though, and we won’t force them. [[In-content Ad]]